Seducing His Secret Wife - Robin Covington Page 0,4

of money. But nothing was a sure thing and he made people nervous, people who only liked to play it safe, people who hesitated to work with Redhawk/Ling because they couldn’t pin him down.

People like the investor group currently considering partnering with the company and giving them the ability to branch out even bigger than they thought possible.

The people who would have a coronary if they heard what he’d done here last night.

He’d gone to Vegas for a poker game and married a complete stranger.

A stranger who had left in the middle of the night.

Justin knew what he had to do. He needed to find this woman and get this marriage dissolved before the press found out and filled every news outlet with another story about his wild and reckless ways. Adam, his best friend and partner in Redhawk/Ling, was going to be pissed. Just last week he’d pleaded with Justin to lie low, to keep his profile more on the respectable side until they’d secured this investment deal and solidified their financial status in the eyes of potential partners. Justin had agreed and he’d kept his end of the bargain.

Until Harley.

And now he had to do damage control, find his wife and keep it out of the press.

He was a gambling man, and he didn’t like his odds.

Two

One week later

This had been a mistake.

Sarina Redhawk stood on the deck of her older brother’s house counting down the seconds until she could leave and head back to her hotel. In front of her, a crowd of people she didn’t know ate barbecue and kept the bartenders occupied pouring fruity drinks while the guests placed their vote in either the blue box with a big bow on top or the pink box with a big bow on top. She’d dropped her ticket in the blue box under the incredibly insistent watch and instruction of someone called Nana Orla.

Adam’s house was nice, not Kardashian massive but large enough to ensure that everyone knew that he was one of the top tech billionaires in Silicon Valley. It had been professionally decorated, that was obvious, in bachelor-chic style but personal photographs, quirky artwork and splashes of color against the neutral sofas and such testified to the entrance of the fiery redhead into her brother’s life. Tess wasn’t timid, she stood tall next to her brother, and Sarina liked her for it. Adam had chosen well, that much was clear.

Just behind her the canyon spread out beneath the deck and dipped into deep purple shadows that reminded her of faraway places she’d served in the army, places that gave her memories that would always follow her no matter how many oceans and miles she put between them. But those memories had taken a back seat lately to the ones she’d been too young to remember, the ones re-created for her and contained in the package her brother Adam had given her and her twin, Roan, when he’d found them again.

Twenty-five years, seven crappy foster homes, one shitty adoptive home, one GED, one enlistment and two tours in the Middle East later and she was here: at the gender reveal party for her older brother Adam and his fiancée, Tess.

And completely out of her comfort zone.

She’d agreed to come to the party tonight because she felt bad about storming out of here the last time, repaying Adam and Tess’s hospitality with hostility and painful words. She hadn’t meant to hurt him but playing “happy family” with two brothers who were essentially strangers had been beyond her ability at the time.

She’d left that night, hopped on her Harley-Davidson and headed straight out of California, needing to put as much distance as she could between her guilty conscience and Adam and Roan’s pleas for her to give them all a chance. She’d ignored Adam’s voice mails and dodged Roan’s FaceTime requests for a couple of months, taking her bike to every small-town, forgotten, one-stoplight spot on the map, enjoying the freedom of choosing her own path for the first time in her life.

She’d been a military policeman in the army and had liked her job but she’d hit the time when she’d had to get out or stay in until retirement. And she’d opted to get out, explore and figure out who the hell Sarina Redhawk was supposed to be when she grew up. She’d thought it would be scary but it had been amazing. Freedom. Time to think. Space to figure some crap out.

Sarina had camped